


Jellyfish

by bunnyangel



Series: In This Reality [3]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: 911 Words, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Buck Has A Nap, Eddie Has A Trip, Episode: s02e06 Dosed, Hallucinations, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:49:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29544021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnyangel/pseuds/bunnyangel
Summary: In this reality, the trip is slightly less funny.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Series: In This Reality [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2146413
Comments: 4
Kudos: 98
Collections: 9-1-1 Tales, 911: What's Your Word Count?





	Jellyfish

**Author's Note:**

> Exactly 911 words typed by the power of thumbs from the dark, desolate, wintery Texas wasteland.

It's all shits and giggles until Buck starts seizing and they all end up in the hospital. He hasn't worked with Buck very long--knows him even less--but there's a weird part of him that wants to go _of course_. The chaotic energy that this partner of his oozes in spades just...speaks to that kind of luck.

It might just be the LSD talking. He's only got a single finger on the pulse of reality because his hands are still shaking and when he looks, a strange sort of fear chokes him. He knows they're _his_ but at the same time they don't _feel_ like his and even worse, when he looks away they're not _there_ anymore.

He's been declared perfectly fine if "tripping balls" so he's just waiting, both for his partner to wake up and to wind down. He wants to walk off all this restless energy, but sometimes he's not even sure his legs are there anymore either. The floor is doing weird, bendy, unstable things anyway and there's something like blood coating the back of his throat, but he can't tell if it's a hallucinogenic sensory thing or if it's because he remembers the last horrible time he was in a hospital setting.

Either way, Buck is too silent and too still on the starched white of the hospital bed and he won't leave without him.

At the very least, the embarrassing, uncontrollable urge to burst into tears has passed, but there's still a low thrum of anxiety coursing through him that threatens to build back into it. Logically, he understands what's happened to them and that every single one of them is going to be okay.

But it only barely helps him keep a lid on things because the finish line seems fairly far off and really, the walls occasionally weeping blood is frankly just excessive on top of everything, but at least it does serve to remind him that nothing is real the way the clouds and jellyfish don't quite manage.

Because there are--the beeping of Buck's heart monitor is a pulsing white-blue of extremely soothing but entirely unwelcome little jellyfish that float around Buck's face. They throw his features into sharp, shadowed relief and somehow highlight just how extremely good looking his partner is.

And everytime the nurse walks in for a check, she's heralded by a slew of tiny woodland creatures. Soft, glowing wisps of pine and mint and wet-earth decay lazily drift in behind her and linger in the room; like stepping into a copse of trees and immediately losing the light in a dense, misty forest. He tracks a rabbit hopping across the melty, mutating floor before a flash of teeth in the corner of his eye has him flinching and tensing against looking.

The shadows are a fun new thing, darting in bizarre, creepy as shit patterns whenever he so much as blinks. The unsettling impression of too many teeth in vaguely human faces burns in his retinas.

It's not real. He knows. Nothing is.

He's only mostly sure of this.

In the end, he just closes his eyes and concentrates hard on the slow inhale and exhale of the man on the bed. Buck's bedsheets are currently crooning softly which is _by_ _far_ the creepiest thing yet.

He falls asleep that way.

When he wakes, Bobby is in the only other chair in the room.

Eddie stares at him for a full minute. He searches for the words, thoughts disjointed and disconnected in the worst ways.

"Are you actually here?" He croaks, finally.

Bobby quirks a fully tired and slightly sad smile. "I am."

It's exactly what a hallucination would say, but he shrugs and rolls with it. The air is clear and the jellyfish are gone and the sheets have stopped singing and the floor seems stable. Plus there are many things he has and could still be hallucinating, but his captain is fairly low on that list. So.

"How are you doing?"

He takes stock.

"Better. "

Which is to say he still feels like shit--strung out, squeezed thin--like all his synapses have fried with sensory overload and the occasional flashes in his peripheral are just the final dying symptoms of collapse. The shadows are laughing at him.

His entire body aches like he's been running this whole time instead of just sitting like a limp fish. His eyeballs burn with deprivation and grit but the idea of closing them anymore is...distressing.

He wants a hot shower and something warm to eat that will make him feel less like a shredded, brittle leaf in an infinitely messed up and violently turbulent wind.

"I'm fine, too," comes the weak whisper on the hospital bed between them.

"Buck!"

"Buck, you had us worried, kid."

He wrangles weak limbs and forces to his feet; balances for just a moment because they're still not quite right. He ignores the lingering, persistent paranoia that they're not his and crosses the few steps to the bed to take an equally cold hand in his.

Buck smiles tiredly up at him and it's the most beautiful thing he's seen since he moved to LA. The tightness in his chest eases off and his lips curve up in response. Relief is a cool rush of oxygen in his lungs. It's light breaking through trees and a birdsong in the dark. His partner is awake and everything's going to be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Yea, idk. Three or so days in the freezing dark with mostly my phone for company and this came out.


End file.
